We are pleased to announce that our School of Medicine will be offering a Specialised Foundation Programme in partnership with NIMDTA. The programme will be commencing in August 2024. Please see the information below on the application process and the specialisms we offer.
How does the Application Process work?
The eligibility criteria for the Foundation Programme and the Specialised Foundation Programme (AF2) are the same. All final year UK medical students are therefore eligible to apply but must show the potential to fulfil a demanding academic role while still achieving clinical competencies.
Further information on the recruitment process is available on the Foundation Recruitment (nimdta.gov.uk) webpages.
| Deadline | Activity |
|---|---|
12 September 2023, 9am | Academic and general applicants register and enrol on Oriel |
20 September – 4 October 2023 | Complete national application form on Oriel and Select the NI SUoA also |
4 October - 29 December 2023 | Local SFP selection processes |
From 10 January 2024 | Specialised Foundation Programme (SFP) offers made. All offers must be accepted or declined on Oriel by the stated deadline |
Programmes on Offer
Simulation Based Medical Education – Dr Lysa Owen
The programme will cover the following: -
- Simulated Based Medical Education Principles
- Learning Pedagogy of Effective Simulation Based Learning
- Briefing
- De-briefing
- Teamwork
Pulmonary Fibrosis – Dr Nazia Chaudhuri
The successful candidate will gain experience in Speciality clinical and research in Interstitial Lung Disease/Pulmonary Fibrosis with weekly ILD Clinic. You will also gain experience in clinical trials in fibrosis, performing supervised research visits and a QI project for publication.
The programme will cover the following: -
- Speciality Experience in weekly fibrosis Clinics;
- Clinical Trial Experience - performing research visits and attending site initiation visits;
- To perform a quality improvement project evaluating whether monthly blood tests are a requirements for antifibrotic prescribing;
- To learn data extraction, analysis and basic statistical skills
Global Health: Birth Defect Diagnosis – Professor Helen Dolk
The successful candidate will learn how to design and evaluate Health interventions for use in low resource areas of low income countries, specifically in the area of birth defect diagnosis.
The programme will cover the following: -
- Investigating how the Global Birth Defects app could be developed to better support diagnosis;
- Early treatment of birth defects in low resource settings, and design implementation research to evaluate this;
- Depending on your interests, a specific extension for congenital heart disease could be designed. You will work with collaborators in subSaharan African countries.
Clinical Research in Obesity and Diabetes – Professor Alexander Miras
The programme will cover the following: -
- All methods associated with experimental medicine studies in humans and clinical trials, starting from recruitment, randomisation, delivery of the protocol, data analysis, manuscript submission for publication and oral presentations;
- All aspects of clinical research which will include testing of novel hormones in humans for the purposes of reducing food intake and improving glucose regulation;
- Exposed to methodologies including eating behaviour studies, oral glucose tolerance tests, insulin clamps and depending on the project some basic science laboratory work as well;
- Training will be provided on how to deliver such studies and build up their CV, through publications and presentations, to enable them to continue with a clinical academic career in the future;
Personalised Medicine Research – Dr David Gibson
The programme will cover the following: -
- Exposure to translational research environment, rated top 5 in biomedical sciences in REF2021;
- Experience and development of bench skills such as pipetting, cell culture, microscopy, genomics, proteomics or flow cytometry for lab based projects;
- Experience and development of data-analytic skills such as elementary coding in R, data handling and clean up, bioinformatics and statistical softwares, data visualisation for data focussed projects;
Both types of lab or data projects would require working as part of larger research teams and opportunities for presentation and report drafts of findings. Research programmes are supplemented by theory lectures/ tutorials available as part of the aligned BSc in Personalised Medicine program. There would be scope to explore further research projects, research degrees and additional funding programmes for highly motivated and research oriented candidates.